The Balenciaga ‘BDSM Children’ Scandal Is Fishy As Hell

After days of backlash and accusations of sexualizing children, Balenciaga finally released a statement apologizing for its recently rolled-out holiday campaign. In it are photographs of young girls donning Balenciaga clothing and holding “plush bear bags” (normal!) made of stuffed animals that appear to be wearing black leather bondage gear (way less normal, and quite disturbing). Critics on social media have called the campaign “disgusting” and “creepy,” questioning whether the images are real to begin with. Unfortunately for all of us, they very much are.

The fashion house apologized for the campaign in an Instagram story yesterday: “We sincerely apologize for any offense our holiday campaign may have caused,” they said. “Our plush bear bags should not have been featured with children in this campaign. We have immediately removed the campaign from all platforms.”

But wait, there’s more: Twitter user @shoe0nhead also took a magnifying glass to Balenciaga’s “hourglass purse” advert (a separate campaign done in collaboration with Adidas), which features the bag on top of a messy desk filled with papers. At first glance, the image seems completely mundane (who am I to judge someone for an untidy work space?) until you realize that amidst the scattered papers are excerpts from the Supreme Court case United States v. Williams, which upheld part of a federal child pornography law by criminalizing its advertisement, promotion, and distribution.

This prompted a second apology from Balenciaga, in which they state:

We apologize for displaying unsettling documents in our campaign. We take this matter very seriously and are taking legal action against the parties responsible for creating the set and including unapproved items for our spring 23 campaign photoshoot. We strongly condemn abuse of children in any form. We stand for children safety and well-being.

It’s hard to believe that a company as high-end and well-known as Balenciaga—whose entire success revolves around highly controlled imaging—could overlook errors this egregious, all the way to the point of publication. The public is left to wonder if these “unapproved items” were planted by a contractor/staffer with an agenda, or if this really is a classic case of “shock factor” gone too far. Some have even speculated that the luxury brand left Twitter right before the campaign launched to avoid accountability for its questionable messaging.

Kim Kardashian, a big face of Balenciaga, has been bombarded on social media for staying silent on the matter, with fans commenting hashtags like #CancelBalenciaga and #BoycottBalenciaga on her Instagram posts. According to Cosmo, Bella Hadid, who has also worked closely with the brand, seems to have taken swift action, deleting her most recent collaboration with them from Instagram.

It appears that Balenciaga’s own Instagram account is currently wiped clean, featuring a grand total of zero posts. Maybe they ought to keep it that way for a bit while they look into what the hell happened here.